- Journalists to get approval before releasing information.
- New guidelines limit journalists’ movement within the Pentagon.
- Journalists required to sign a statement that promised to comply.
Washington: The Pentagon has revealed new restrictions on media covering the US military and demanding that they promise not to reveal anything that is not formally approved for publication and restrict their movements within the war department.
The new guidelines placed in a long memo distributed to journalists on Friday require that they sign a statement that promised to comply – or risk losing their media information.
The move is the latest of the administration of President Donald Trump to control media coverage of his policies and after he suggested that negative stories could be “illegal.”
The Pentagon “remains obliged to transparency to promote accountability and public trust,” the note says.
But it adds: “Information must be approved for public release by an appropriate autori[s]ing official before it is released, although unclassified ” – effective blocking of material taken to named officials.
This new limitation would apply to both classified and “controlled unclassified information.”
The memo also describes swept new limitations to where the Pentagon journalists can actually go without official escorts within the military’s huge headquarters just outside Washington.
“‘Press’ doesn’t run Pentagon – the people do,” wrote defense secretary Pete Hegeth on X.
“The press is no longer allowed to roam the halls at a safe facility. Wear a badge and follow the rules – or go home.”
The new rules come months after Hegeth faced Stark criticism for revealing times for US air strikes on Yemens Houthis in a signal group chat that accidentally included a reporter.
Hegeth — a former Fox News-CO host and Army National Guard veteran-also also reported to have shared these details in a separate signal group chain that included his wife.
A New York Times spokesman – a frequent target for Trump’s IRE – called the new rules “yet another step in a pattern of reducing access to what the US military is taking on the taxpayer.”
National press club president Mike Balsamo hit the new rules and called on the Pentagon to quickly resign.
“If the news of our military is to be approved by the government first, the public no longer gets independent reporting,” Balsamo said in a statement.
“It only gets what officials want them to see. It should alarm every American.”
